Useful research about mitigating the limited use of productive land in present solar at scale.
"Their research is a year into a four-year study examining how varying heights and designs impact crop production in agrivoltaic farms, where solar installations and farmland are co-located on the same land. The study hopes to determine whether higher solar arrays create better growing conditions for horticultural crops and beekeeping production."
"During the project’s first year, summer squash and peppers produced better in the solar panel area, he said. However, Nair said this is not true for all crops, such as broccoli, which did not grow as large as the crops in the control plot. "
Source: BlueSkyd2000
2 Comments
Certainly still a lot to learn.
And as shown again here: one size does not fit all. Each crop, fruit, plant is different. Just as climatic conditions, solar irradiation, soil differ from location to location.
Nevertheless, as also shown here for e.g. pepper, in some cases agriPV can be a huge win-win (as also shown in German experiments with hop and apple trees).
It is counter intuitive at first that crops could grow well under solar panels, which compete for sunlight. But plants close their leaf pores in times of water stress, stopping photosynthesis. Each species has their own threshold of temprature and water availability for doing this, but it happens for a few hours almost every day in summer, even in a temperate climate like Iowa. Summer crops grow really well under solar panels.
The article is great, but [Iowa State’s website has photos that really illustrate this.](https://agrivoltaics.research.iastate.edu/) You can find a [video of the site here.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IV6ppv191ZY) It produces a *lot* of vegetables.
OP should crosspost this to r/agrivoltaics